Thursday, 30 April 2009

Its time for Blog Banter once again. This months question is put forward by Crazykinux himself, and asks: "What 3 things haven't you done in EVE and why? Would you be willing to try one day? Why so? Why not?"

So there we go... in a system with seemingly infinite possibilities such as the principally player-driven world of Eve, there must be hundreds, if not thousands of things that people havent done, because quite simply, theres so much more than can be created.

I love the idea of the online poker systems that Mynxee has written about in the past for instance, and ways of making money that dont revolve around mindlessly plinking away at NPC's for hours on end.

But im not going to write about that thing specifically, or indeed about some of the many other things I've yet to do. My 3 points for this post are as follows:

1) Being a pirate.

I've mentioned it before on here, but I dont have the ruthless streak to jump out randomly at an innocent and want to ruin their day. That doesnt of course mean that I dont like a good fight, but on the other hand, I am always on the back foot, because the people I do fight against (specifically, player pirates) are usually seasoned PVPers themselves, which makes my relative inexperience in combat show.

I love the idea of defending an area of space (see later for more on that) against all and sundry, but dont like the idea of mindless killing for the sake of there being a target in front of you.

Add to the fact that the 'gang vs gang' (i.e. blob warfare) mentality means that its really hard to go out and just have a bit of fun without being utterly outnumbered a lot of the time, makes getting out and actually having a chance to survive much more likely with lots of planning to get into groups - and quite frankly the majority of the time people are available to settle in for an hour or two is usually a bit too late in the day for me most of the time, which also adds to the problems.

So to directly answer the question - no, I dont want to actually do this in the future.

2) Train and fly 'proper' capital ships.

I have a freighter on the account, but I dont class this as a proper capital ship, since is fairly easy to get into. I mean the all of the rank 10-14 type really, really long running skills that old pilots look into doing just because they need something to train.

On my main (Karox) account, I am playing as a jack of all trades, and as a consequence of that, I still have many years of training possibilities in front of me. I honestly dont think that there will be any time I could consider doing capital ships with him.

I have an alt account that is more combat focused, and does the majority of my PVPing. That character may well be trained into capital ships, but again, with several years of non-capital training ahead, I'm unsure if its ever anything I would want to look into.

3) Being part of a corporation that lives in 0.0 space.

This has always been an aim of mine, and it was something I was looking into a lot last year when I was a bit bored and lookign for something new.

Since then, I have returned to my old corporation, we have joined a fledgeling alliance, with grand plans, and it gives us something to work towards to have an aim to live in 0.0.

Now the reality of the situation is that we currently dont have the logistics in place (see potentially capital ships, carriers etc) to maintain a life in 0.0 as it stands, because quite simply, theres times you need to get back to the Highsec markets to buy the stuff to live with, and going through 0.0 entryway gate camps is something I dont want to have to worry about time and time again, so we need jump capable ships which can deposit us to a suitable lowsec entry point, shuttle stuff back and forward, then jump back directly into 0.0.

Out of all of these 3 points, I think this is the most likely I will achieve, simply because its not a personal goal, but one of a group of people, and with a few people working together, its possible to achieve, even if its just basing out of NPC space for the start until we get our feet under the door, and can contest for sovereignty space.

On the plus side, now that we can use blockade runners to run cargo into a system using covert cyno's and Black Ops battleships, thats one more logistics route we can cover, but unfortunately only one or two pilots in the corp can use blackops ships at the moment.

Saturday, 18 April 2009

OK for a kick off, i'm not going to join in with the whining masses saying 'inventions broke, it never works' because well... I know it does. Sometimes though, I always think that Lady Luck really, really doesn't like me.

Over the past week or two I've updated all my Science skills so I have level 3 in every Invention based skill (except for ships, but im not inventing them yet, so no rush) and I have invested in several new blueprints, which have been researched a bit (for future use) and copied ready for invention for when the skills finished training.

Now I know that level 3 in each skill isnt the best starting point, but by the 'unapproved' calculations that are known about gives me around about a 47% chance which im happy enough as a start point.

Of course, in conjunction with that, I have managed a 4 out of 5 research on the last of my Invulnerability field 2's, and a 3 out of 5 result on Gas Cloud Harvester 2's - unfortunately the market is getting pretty tight with the cost of materials for Invulnerability fields, and theres not much sales volume on the Gas Cloud Harvesters to make them a reliable sales point.

Anyway... as I say, I know invention works, and sometimes you can get some spectacular numbers of successes... but why do they always come on things I dont particularly want them on ?

Thursday, 16 April 2009

It seems that it has picked up a whole heap of viruses and things, theres warnings all over.

If you go to the site, make sure your virus scanners are up to date.

It seems that there has been reports of the Swift.C virus being detected, which is a virus that works from Adobe Flash Player, which the site uses (as well as many others, so check any sites with flash content you go to) but supposedly the newest version of flash player has patched the vulnerability, so make sure you get flash player 10.

Wednesday, 15 April 2009

Seems that everyone in the blogging eve universe is having their say about the new changes with the coming patch tomorrow.

ECM ship changes are the main focus, with some quite significant changes to the Falcon and the Rook to get them out of massive ranges (Falcon) or the Hangar (Rook)

Suffice to say that I don't really have much experience with the 'overpowered' falcon since I've only managed to train Recon ships up to level 2 so far, so I'd never done much with my Falcon other than a cursory test flight around highsec - so in short, I dont really have much to say, and I'll see just what happens when it happens, and I get to train another level or 2 on Recon ships.

The stealth bomber role change is looking a bit more interesting though. Firstly, the bomber is going to lose its ability to use cruise missiles acting as a long range sniper ship... this is good in a way, as the main problem with 150km cruise missiles were that they took about 30 seconds to hit your opponent, meaning that anyone with half a brain could leave before they had any hint of damage.

In its place, is the ability to fit Siege launchers and Torpedoes, with the role bonus being changed to no longer use 'big missiles to hit small targets' but rather 'bigger missiles to hit big targets.'

Unfortunately there are 2 problems with this new role:

1) I dont have torpedoes trained up. OK, not a problem with the system per se, but still annoying.

2) Its still going to take about 10 stealth bombers working in harmony to have enough damage to take out a battleship in one salvo - they still wont have the ability to withstand incoming fire for the second and third salvo to fire, and with the fact they will need to be quite close to the target due to the short range of the torpedoes, its putting them much closer to the action, and therefore at risk of being locked by an opponent.

Other issues are that the Bombs are going to be made easier to produce (20 per run rather than the current 3) - although im not sure if that will also have a corresponding increase in material costs to determine the expected value of the new bombs and it seems that these will also not be limited to 1 per ship now, as they are just being classed as a standard launcher hardpoint weapon.

Of course, bombs suffer in that they can only be used in 0.0 space, but for those that know their niche then they will have life a bit easier in getting them I guess.

Above all though, I'm looking forward to having another ship to fit a covert ops cloak to, mainly because as a Tech 2 cloak producer, anything that creates additional demand can only be good for sales. For my own use, it would be nice to have something other than the Buzzard to muck around all stealthy and cloak-like for a bit of a change of pace.

... Now all I need to do is try and find some time to train up Torpedoes.

Saturday, 11 April 2009

Whats better after a long day of capsuleering than going planetside and whacking friends with big sticks and swords?

Ok... maybe a nice hot bath and a good meal, but well lets leave that one go at the moment.

Mybrutes is a little web browser program that lets you have random arena battles with anyone who wishes to challenge you, and you wish to challenge them. Its been a bit of a hit in the local corp forums as everyone's been making a character... and now you can freely bash on Karox until your heart is content by simply clicking on the link and making your character (or of course, if you already have a character, im up for the challenge)

Wednesday, 8 April 2009

Since it seems it's been a while since I wrote anything, I'll.. well.. write something - just incase people think i've fell off the face of the planet or something.

I'm now about a day and a half away from getting barge 5 finished, and from that, one of my first goals, getting into my Hulk that I made during my initial forays into Tech 2 manufacturing, is on the cards.

From that, I then Intend to spend about 26 days (according to Evemon anyway) getting to the point where I can invent anything for Tech 2 with a reasonable efficiency (everying at level 3, with some stuff at level 4) as well as train up the subsystem tech skills, metallurgy and reverse engineering for Tech 3. That will then let me get back to training up some combat skills in the meantime. I'll also get up to cruiser manufacturing 4 to allow me sit on the brink of Tech 3 manufacturing, and do some Tech 2 cruisers and frigates.

I still dont really have much interest in training up Jury Rigging 5 and getting to level 5 on the ship engineering skills to allow me to do the final assembly on Tech 3 ships just yet, but I'll consider that after I work on my combat skills again, perhaps finally getting my Nighthawk ive been lusting after for what seems like months.

Corp wise, we've joined a new alliance this week, should be fun getting to know the new alliance mates over the coming days/weeks, and then see exactly what alliance life can offer us.

Anyway... nothing spectacular happening at the moment I'm afraid... im making stuff, selling stuff, and wondering where to spend my hard earned cash... I've invested heavily in a new batch of tech 2 advanced materials and new blueprints for my expanding focus on tech 2 and invention, so im quietly hoping there isnt a massive price crash over the next month or two whilst I get everything in place.

Hopefully with the alliance there, and all the new stuff that could bring, I might have plenty to write about in the future... and theres always the guides - I'm busy looking at the old ones to update them ready for Apocrypha, so keep your eyes peeled.

Thursday, 2 April 2009

I've just recieved the latest copy of EON through the post today (Issue 15) with my (hopefully) long awaited Tech 2 article inside.

And it seems I wasnt very good at proof reading it - theres a pretty major misprint on the table dealing with Alchemy (page 77) - the table supposedly lists R16 and R32 moon minerals for use in the Alchemy process, but it doesnt, in fact it lists the Gas type minerals twice.

The correct list of R16 and R32 minerals can be found in the simple reaction table (page 75) if you're desperate to look them up.

Whilst I'm on and in an apologetic mood, I also noticed that I got my sums wrong in my Tech 1 guide from issue 14, incorrectly stating that the waste factor was halved with every level of ME research done on a blueprint - this again is wrong.

In fact the correct calculation is 'Base Waste Level'/1+ ME value. Therefore at ME1 the waste is halved, at ME2 its cut to a third, ME3 its cut to a quater and so on.

It seems now that everyone is off doing the wormhole thing (and many have been there and gotten bored) its time to produce a new exploration guide in light of the original one that I linked to now becoming obsolete.

I hope everyone finds it useful - as always, if you find some issues or feel you can expand it, feel free to drop me an email.